Instead of going to Panera Bread or the grocery store for a peanut butter cookie try making my Perfect Peanut Butter Cookies instead. You can whip them up in less than 20 minutes with simple ingredients from your pantry. They are soft center cookies that are chewy, crunchy and perfectly sweet and salty. Don’t skip out on the chopped peanuts and natural peanut butter with flaked sea salt. With this recipe it’s possible to have bakery cookies at home.
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Why You will love these cookies
- Made from start to finish in less than 20 minutes without fancy kitchen equipment
- Recipe uses pantry staples
- Bakery style cookies at home without harmful ingredients
- Uses real, natural creamy peanut butter not Jiff or Skippy
- Perfectly chewy, crispy and soft cookies every time.
Ingredient Notes
Flour: Use a good quality All Purpose Un Bleached Flour for the cookies like Wheat Montana White Flour or King Arthur Organic All Purpose Flour. I always bake with Unbleached because it doesn’t contain the chemicals used in bleached flour to whiten it. Instead the flour is milled to oxidize on its own overtime. And if you take a step further the organic flour is free of glyphosates and GMO’s. It is important to me to choose the quality ingredient not only for nutrients but because it provides the most flavor and taste is everything. Especially with baking. Here’s a great article by at Lehi Mills (a local mill I buy flour from in Utah) about the difference between flours so you can decide which is best for you.
Butter & Salt: Butter and salt are some of the most important ingredients when baking cookies. Butter creamed with the sugar incorporates air into the dough leading to a very soft and puffed up cookie. Add a little salt and every other element added pops with flavor. You really can’t have a good cookie without butter and salt so make sure to choose wisely because not all are created equally. My go to for butter is unsalted when it comes to baking so I can control my salt (and brand) added. I like Kerrygold Grass Fed Unsalted Butter or Kirkland Unsalted Butter. As for salt, I will only ever buy Redmond Real Salt. It is unrefined, pure mineral salt from an ancient seabed in Utah. It truly is the best salt on the market and the best salt to flavor all of you baking and cooking desires. Use my code cookieeclub to save 15 percent on your next order.
Peanut Butter: I know other bakers and food bloggers say to stay away from natural peanut butter when baking because it leads to dry cookies, etc but it is not true. You don’t need the hydrogenated oils. By adding in an extra egg yolk and honey, paired with the natural creamy peanut butter these cookies will stay soft for days. I left one out over night thinking it would be dried out in the morning and the cookie was still soft and chewy. Tip: mix the natural oils into the peanut butter using a beater with a hand mixer. Use in the cookies and store the leftover peanut butter upside down in the refrigerator. It helps the oils to stay mixed in.
Sugar: I use organic brown sugar and organic cane sugar always because it gives me peace of mind knowing they are less processed than regular sugar (containing some nutrients from the sugar cane) and don’t contain glyphosates. Here’s a good article by “The Skinny on Sweets” to read that talks about the difference between organic sugar vs. regular sugar. However you can use regular refined sugar and brown sugar and still yield a very good tasting cookie. Tip: store your organic sugar in the refrigerator to help it last longer and keep the brown sugar from drying out too fast.
Recipe Variations
- Instead of chopped peanuts try rolling the cookies in extra organic cane sugar or turbinato sugar.
- Drizzle the warm cookies with some melted semi sweet chocolate. They will taste just like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup but better and healthier.
- Try using equal parts cookie butter to peanut butter and crushed biscoff biscuits to replace the chopped peanuts for a fun twist.
How to make the cookies
- Start by preheating the oven to 350 F and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper before making the cookie dough.
- To a large mixing bowl cream together the butter and creamy peanut butter. Then mix in the brown sugar and cane sugar until light and fluffy. Pour in the room temperature egg and egg yolk along with the vanilla bean paste and honey. With the hand mixer, mix until combined.
- In another bowl combine the dry ingredients with a fork: Flour, sea salt, baking soda and arrowroot starch.
- Pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, folding them into each other with a rubber spatula until just combined and a nice dough forms.
- Roughly chop the dry roasted peanuts and place into a bowl. Grab the prepared cookie sheets.
- With a large cookie scoop (about 2.8 oz) make 5 cookie dough balls and dip the tops of each in chopped peanuts to place evenly on a cookie sheet to bake (dough side down, peanuts up.)
- Once the cookies are baked quickly sprinkle with sea salt flakes and allow the cookies to cool on the pan.
- Continue baking the rest of the cookie dough.
- Once all the cookies are baked eat them right away or store left over in an airtight container (up to 3 days) on the countertop out of the sun.
- Refer to the recipe card for instructions on how to freeze the baked cookies.
Perfect Peanut Butter Cookies
Equipment
- 1-3 Baking Sheet
Ingredients
Cookie Dough:
- ½ cup softened butter unsalted
- ½ cup natural, organic creamy peanut butter
- ¾ cup organic light brown sugar
- ¼ cup organic cane sugar
- 1 egg room temperature
- 1 egg yolk room temperature
- 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste or extract
- 1 teaspoon organic raw honey
- ½ teaspoon Redmonds sea salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 tablespoon arrowroot powder
- 1 ¼ cups all purpose unbleached flour
Topping:
- ½ cup Dry Roasted Unsalted Peanuts chopped
- Flaked Sea Salt optional
Instructions
- Start by preheating the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Next line a baking tray with parchment paper and set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl add softened butter and creamy peanut butter and mix 1-2 minutes with a hand mixer until smooth.
- Now add in the brown sugar and organic cane sugar and mix another 1-2 minutes until light and fluffy.
- Pour in the egg and egg yolk, vanilla bean paste, and honey into the bowl and mix until completely combined.
- Grab a small mixing bowl and mix the dry ingredients (baking soda, salt, arrowroot powder, and flour) with a fork.
- Dump the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and fold them into each other with a rubber spatula until a dough forms and the flour has disappeared.
- Roughly chop up the organic peanuts and add to a bowl. Grab a prepared baking sheet.
- With a large cookie scoop (about 2.8 oz), scoop a cookie dough ball and dip the top in the crushed peanuts before placing onto the cookie sheet (dough side down, peanut side up.) Continue until there is 5 unbaked cookies on a pan, evenly spaced.
- Bake the cookies at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 12 min until the edges are lightly browned and the centers are slightly underdone.
- Immediately sprinkle the tops of the baked cookies with flaked sea salt if desired and allow the cookies to cool on the pan to set.
- Continue baking until all the dough has been used.
- Serve the cookies right away after cooling.
- Store any leftover in an airtight container (on the counter, away from the sun), for up to 3 days or place in a freezer friendly zip lock bag (making sure to remove as much air as possible from the bag) in the freezer for up to 3 months. To reheat either warm in the microwave for 10 seconds or place on the counter for a few hours to come back to room temp.